A wise colleague once told me:
“Being an enterprise salesperson means looking at yourself like a franchise. You can use the resource the company offers you in marketing, operations and business development but in the end of the day you have to act as if you are running your own business.”
Cold calling is one of the most intimidating activities in sales.
Truth be told, it’s not that bad. The fear of the cold call is based more on a personal dread of rejection than anything else. Cold call rejections are definitive, and that isn’t easy for many people to handle. But there are ways to approach cold calls that can help you maximize their use and counter balance that awful rejection with the glory of sales.
There are 3 guidelines for overcoming the fear of cold calling:
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Receiving an RFP from a prospect early on in an engagement can feel very exciting.
But is it a good sign?
Selling a game changer is special. But, it takes a game changing kind of salesperson to do it right.
I was recently asked:
The short answer is CLOSING.
Imagine a scenario where everything went perfectly. They loved the product, they responded really well to your presentation, you hit if off personally and they even scheduled time to discuss next steps.
But then, nothing.
No returned calls. No responses to your emails. It’s as if they’ve fallen off the face of the earth…and it hurts so badly, because–as you tell your boss–“they were ready to sign!”
If you experience this type of scenario repeatedly, then you likely have a problem disqualifying prospects. The problem is not them, it’s you.
At some time or another you’re bound to have viewed the Alec Baldwin sales monologue from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross.
Most people are introduced to it in sales meetings. It’s used to expose salespeople to the no holds barred sales shark attitude that every manager wishes his salespeople would have.
If your manager is showing you this, it’s not a good sign. More than likely, it indicates that your sales manager is not a sales leader.
This may be the one environment in which it is more appropriate to tell rather than sell.
Qualification is the skill that sits at the tip of the spearhead of sales craft.
The essence of qualification is identifying who you’re talking to, what they do, who they do it for and whether they can purchase.
Selling SaaS 